MS NOW - The D.C. Bar’s disciplinary case against a Trump administration attorney is more than just professional misconduct: It's a key test of whether the legal profession will hold government officials accountable for using their power to try to silence private institutions, writes Duncan Levin, a criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor. As interim U.S. attorney in D.C. last year, Ed Martin threatened Georgetown University Law Center over its policies on diversity, equity and inclusion, in an unfortunate echo of McCarthy-era blacklists and the Watergate scandal. If the Bar finds that Martin abused his position, sanctions could range from a reprimand to a suspension of his law license or even disbarment.
Joshua Nass, 34, was arrested on Friday after being charged in federal court in Brooklyn with attempted Hobbs Act extortion. US justice department prosecutors contend that Nass threatened a client for payment that he claimed he was owed for his services.
Nass is alleged to have provided an unnamed individual with a phone number as well as addresses while instructing the individual to visit the client at his home. It was an effort to intimidate the client into paying up, as prosecutors put it.
According to prosecutors, Nass told the individual in question to “do anything and everything” to force to the payment, including “physically assaulting” the client’s son or “forcing him into a car with masked men and threatening him to make someone in [the son’s] family pay Nass”.
It is also alleged that Nass told the individual that he could not be a “human being” with the client’s son if the son rebuffed paying. Nass is alleged to have agreed to pay the individual “at least $15,000 for his continued efforts”...
Nass had a role in Trump’s 14 November 2025 pardon of Joseph Schwartz, who had been convicted in Arkansas over his ownership of a nursing-home empire that had failed to pay nearly $40m in employment and payroll taxes – and had been charged with Medicaid fraud.
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